


And When You're Gone (i feel incomplete)

by the9muses



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Brief references to homophobia, F/F, Names, i'm sorry this ended up so angsty in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29967933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the9muses/pseuds/the9muses
Summary: When Jemma first notices the writing on her arm, she’s seven.A skimmons soulmates AU, with a healthy dash of angst ;)
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 38





	And When You're Gone (i feel incomplete)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is my second entry for @agentsofchallenges march madness. Soulmate AUs forever. Down with High School AUs :P (i have nothing against people who like hs aus unless you're lora or day. then i have problems.) 
> 
> tw for briefly implied homophobia

When Jemma first notices the writing on her arm, she’s seven. She wakes up one morning and stares down at it, baffled. It wasn’t there when she went to sleep, where could it have come from? She goes into the bathroom to wash it off, but it doesn’t come off. 

_ That’s odd,  _ she thinks, and scrubs a little harder. It stays where it is. 

So instead of wasting her time on that, she decides to decipher the messy scrawl. 

When she finally puzzles out that it says  _ Skye _ (and it takes her a long time, the handwriting is  _ awful)  _ she says the name again and again and again. It feels right on her tongue, sweet and pretty. 

She runs to her parents, giddy with the knowledge, but she doesn’t get the reaction she’d expected. They eye the words and whisper to each other, exchanging glances that she doesn’t understand. 

A week later she gets the Talk. 

The one about  _ soulmates.  _

She’s never heard about soulmates before, and she listens wide-eyed as her parents explain what having a soulmate means. She does a bit of bouncing up and down, too, when she learns about all the ways it’s possible to meet her soulmate. 

“Now, sweetie,” her mum says gently, “the thing is... your soulmate’s name, well...it’s only a first name. And even with both first and last names, some people never find their soulmates. You, with only one name…”

Jemma stops breathing for a second. Not find her soulmate? That’s possible? 

“But Mummy,” she says, confused, “you found Daddy. Why is this any different?”

“Your dad and I are very lucky, darling, to have found each other.”

“Oh,” Jemma says quietly, pushing back the tears welling up in her eyes. So she could go her entire life without the person who wrote those four letters, the four letters that sound so perfect on her tongue? 

(across the Atlantic, Skye hides her Mark whenever she can, terrified that someone will see it and realize that it’s a  _ girl’s name _ , not a boy’s. If they see it they’ll do something about it, she’s absolutely certain)

When Jemma is thirteen, the name changes. That in itself is odd, but suddenly it’s  _ two  _ names. Daisy Johnson, still in that same terribly messy scrawl as before. Her parents exchange glances again, and she’s learned to read them by now. They’re doubtful, clearly.  _ Someone who changes her name can’t be a good person  _ is what she gets from those glances. 

That doesn’t stop her from repeating the name over and over whenever she can, feeling how it sounds and how it tastes and how absolutely, utterly perfect it is, even better than Skye. 

The first time she googles it, though, it brings up missing person reports and nothing else, just a slew of disaster and grieving parents and a little baby girl (about her age. She files that information away for another time when she’s not in shock) named Daisy who was taken away in the dead of night.

(across the Atlantic, Daisy struggles to fit into a world that was created for her by people who have only ever known the image of her, struggles to become  _ Daisy Johnson,  _ struggles to become what she’s supposed to be. 

The only thing that keeps her sane is the name, written on her arm in neat penmanship.  _ Jemma Simmons _ . It’s perfect.) 

When Jemma is twenty-three, she moves across the Atlantic, to Massachusetts. (she tries to tell herself it’s because of the job opportunities, not because Daisy went missing in the very same state, but she knows what’s true.)

When Jemma is twenty-seven, she meets her soulmate at a bus stop. It’s rainy and dreary and she’s in a hurry but just as she’s about to climb onto the bus she feels a twinge in her arm, right about where her Mark is, and then it’s a warm feeling, and it’s  _ hot _ , and there is a woman at the bus stop who looks stricken, holding a hand to her arm. 

“Daisy?” she calls, on a whim, and the woman’s head snaps up. Jemma’s breath stops. She’s gorgeous, and her name is...Daisy.

“Jemma?”

Jemma nods frantically, and they meet in the middle, hands held out for an awkward handshake. 

“I didn’t expect you to be British,” she says, laughing a little. 

Jemma smiles. “I didn’t expect you to be so beautiful.”

Daisy smirks, but Jemma spies the blush lurking underneath. “You’re sweet. What’s your phone number?”

“You’re lucky you’re my soulmate, I would have run away if you’d done that without being my soulmate.” 

Daisy laughs and  _ dear God  _ it is the most beautiful sound Jemma’s ever heard. “I definitely am lucky.”

Jemma is pretty sure Daisy can see  _ her  _ blush, which is  _ completely  _ unfair. 

To fix that, she gives Daisy her number, and the two agree to meet up and get to know each other as soon as they possibly can.

Jemma is twenty-eight when she and Daisy move in together. It’s easier being with Daisy than anyone she’s ever been around. They fit together so easily, the inside jokes and laughter and joy that they share all becoming so vital to Jemma’s sense of home. Daisy  _ becomes  _ home, as simple as that, and Jemma wouldn’t have it any other way. 

(for the first time in her life, Daisy Johnson feels like she belongs.)

When Jemma is twenty-nine years old, she decides she is going to marry Daisy Johnson. (as if it was ever going to go any differently) 

The day she plans to propose is the day Daisy is on tv for the hundredth time. It comes with the job, given that her (absolutely perfect and amazing) girlfriend is a real, actual,  _ superhero, _ but this time. 

This time is different. 

“Superhero Quake, also known as Daisy Johnson…” the announcer on tv says, and Jemma’s head snaps towards it. She’s been working at her favourite table in May’s Café, checking the clock every few minutes, fiddling with the ring she’s been holding onto for three and a half months. Daisy gets home in two hours, and she can’t wait and also never wants that time to pass. 

“After the attack in Cornwell Park, she was hospitalized. Reports have come in that she died ten minutes ago in Airiam Memorial Hospital. Attempts to contact her next of kin have been made.”

After that, Jemma tunes out, hand shooting towards her phone. She has seven missed calls, from her mum, from the hospital, from  _ Daisy’s  _ mum, who she’s never even met.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. She shakes her head. This can’t be real,  _ can’t be real.  _

One call to the hospital confirms it, and she is left, stranded, completely alone, without Daisy. Without the promise of Daisy at home. With a ring that’s never going to sit on her finger, a completely useless ring. 

(Suddenly she understands what it must feel like to be drowning, head kept down by the currents, water filling mouth and nose and making it impossible to breathe)

But the words remain on her arm, that messy scrawl that she’s loved since she was a child, and she clings to them, a piece of driftwood in the water. If the name is still there, Daisy can’t be dead, right? 

(wrong)

When they finally fade from her arm, Daisy has been dead for six days. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are always appreciated <333


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